THE MARTIANS' VISION OF THE FUTURE

George MarxDepartment of Atomic Physics,
Eötvös University, Budapest

It is well known that it was the U.S., and soon thereafter the
Soviet Union, England, France, and China, where nuclear power
was accomplished. In addition, a number of highly talented physicists
of other nations contributed to the success, e.g. Germans (Hans
Bethe, Felix Bloch, Otto Hahn, Rudolf Peierls), Austrians (Otto
Robert Frisch, Hans Halban, Lise Meitner, Victor Weisskopf), Italians
(Eduardo Amaldi, Enrico Fermi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Emilio Segré).
Teller used to emphasize: - It was the work of many people.
- Why are just Hungarian scientists considered to be, in some
sense, "aliens"?1

The birth of a legend

- Enrico Fermi was a man with outstanding talents, he had many
interests outside his own particular field. He was credited with
asking famous questions. There are long preambles to Fermi's
questions like this:

- The universeis vast, containing myriads of stars,
many of them not unlike ourSun.Manyof
these stars are likely to have planets circlingaround
them. A fair fraction of these planets will have liquid water
on their surface and a gaseous atmosphere. The energy pouringdown from a star will cause the synthesis of organic compounds,
turning the ocean into a thin, warm soup. These chemicals will
join each other to produce a self-reproducing system. The simplest
living things will multiply, evolve by natural selection and become
more complicated till eventually active, thinking creatures will
emerge. Civilization, science, and technology will follow.
Then, yearning for fresh worlds, they will travel to neighboring
planets, and later to planets of nearby stars. Eventually they
should spread outall over the Galaxy. These highly exceptional
and talented people could hardly overlook such a beautiful place
as our Earth. - "And so, " - Fermi came to
his overwhelming question, - "ifall this
has been happening, they should have arrived here by now, so where
are they ? " - Itwas Leo Szilard, a
man with an impish sense of humor, who supplied the perfect reply
to Fermi's rethoric: - "They are among us," - he said,
- "but they call themselves Hungarians. "

This is Francis Crick's version of the myth.2 - A saying
circulated among us that two intelligent species live on Earth:
Humans and Hungarians - as Isaac Asimov recalled. Hans
Bethe wondered quite "seriously" whether a brain
like von Neumann's doesnot indicate a species superior
to that of man.3- Richard Rhodes4
has reported: - At Princeton a saying gained currency that
Neumann, the youngest member of the new Institute for Advanced
Studies, twenty-nine in 1933, was indeed a demigod but that he
had made a thorough, detailed study of human beings and could
imitate them perfectly. - The myth of the Martian origin of
the Hungarian scientists who entered world history on American
soil during World War II probably originated in Los Alamos. Leon
Lederman, director of the Fermilab, reported possible hidden intentions5:
- The production of scientists and mathematicians in the early
20th century was so prolific that many otherwise calm
observers believe Budapest was settled by Martians in a plan to
infiltrate and take over the planet Earth. - (See Kovács'
map in this volume, p.45.) As a matter of fact, these suspicious
Hungarians - Theodore von Kármán, John von Neumann,
Leo Szilard - enjoyed the myth. Edward Teller became
especially happy of his E.T. initials, but he complained about
indiscretion, - Von Kármán must have beentalking. Yankee magazine [March 1980] reported this landing
in detail:

- Gabor, von Kármán, Kemeny, von Neumann, Szilard,
Teller, and Wigner were born in the same quarter of Budapest.
No wonder the scientists in Los Alamos accepted the idea that
well over one thousand years ago a Martian spaceship crashlanded
somewhere in the center of Europe. There are three firm proofs
of the extraterrestrial origins of the Hungarians: they like to
wander about (like gypsies radiating out from the same region).
They speak an exceptionally simple and logical language which
has not the slightest connection with the language of their neighbors.
And they are so much smarter than the terrestrials. (In a slight
Martian accentJohn G. Kemeny added an explanation,
namely, that it is so much easier to learn reading and writing
in Hungarian than in English or French, that Hungarian kids have
much more time left to study mathematics.)

Valentine Telegdi recalled his youth [talk in Budapest 1989]:
- For a young Hungarian abroad it may be good to hide his Hungarian
descent, becauseif it is made known, too much will be
expected of him. People will know that he is one of the Martians
of exceptionally high intelligence who use that incomprehensible
language. There was another profession besides science which was
crowded by Hungarian talents, the cinema, - an art born from
the marriage of traditional drama and modern technology.

Landing in Hollywood

- Legend has it that Hollywood was founded by Hungarians. (At
least in part.)6- Sándor Korda was
born in Hungary, in the fateful year 1919 he emigrated to Germany,
from there to Hollywood, but reached the peak of his career in
England (The Private Life of Henry VIII and Lady Hamilton),
and became Sir Alexander Korda. The names of Hungarians
in Hollywood make a long list, from Adolph Zukor - born in Ricse
(Paramount Pictures) to William Fox - born in Tolcsva,
near Tokaj (20th Century Fox) as founders; from
Michael Curtiz - born in Budapest (Casablanca and The
Adventures of Robin Hood) to Andy Vajna - born in Budapest
(Rambo and Evita) as directors; from Menyhard Lengyel
( Typhoon and Ninotshka) to Joe Esterhas - born
in Csákánydoroszló (Flashdance and
Basic Instinct, working now on a script about the 1956
revolt of Hungary) as screenwriters; from Laszlo Kovacs - born
in Budapest (Easy Riders and Free Willy) to Willy
Zigmond (Close Encounter of the Third Kind and The Dear
Hunter) as cinematographers; from Bela Lugosi - born in Lugos
(Frankenstein and Dracula) to Zsa Zsa Gabor - born
in Budapest (Moulin Rouge and ANightmare on
Elm Street) as actors, and so on. A special attraction to
atoms has been shown by Ciccolina - born as Ilona Staller in Budapest
(in her Orgia Atomica). There is also a list of second
generation Hungarian actors like Tony Curtis - fluent in Hungarian
(stylishly the Lobster Man from Mars and The Boston
Strangler who Likes it Hot) through Paul Newman (
The Sting, then Exodus, followed by a Long Hot Summer)
up to Leslie Howard - born László Steiner (A
Free Soul, later The Scarlet Pimpernel, to be Captured!
and then Gone with the Wind). (Howard was wounded in
World War I; while flying an airplane near Gibraltar on a secret
mission in World War II he was shot down in action, according
to myth at the direct order of Hitler. ) Hungarians have been
laureated by Oscar Awards: George Cukor (director), József
Rufusz (cartoon director), Vilmos Zsigmond (cinematographer),
Adolph Zukor (for life's work). On the wall of Zukor's office
there was an inscription:

TO BE A HUNGARIAN IS NOT ENOUGH.

In a low voice Adolph added: - But it may help. - Non-Hungarians
in Hollywood used to say, - If you have a Hungarian friend,
you don't need an enemy. - According to Norman Macrae, the
biographer of John von Neumann,

- The American word "movie" probably derived from
the Hungarian "mozi. " Cynics says that Hungarians created
America's Hollywood before other Hungarians less destructively
created America's A-bomb.

István Szabó (1938-), the Oscar winner Hungarian
director, recently made a film for the BBC about the capital city
of Hungary. - I called this film "Staying Afloat"
because to me Budapest is like a boat trying not to capsize as
it is buffeted by waves from all directions. We've beenlashed
by history and we mustn't let it suck us under. The very air of
Budapest exudes this daily struggle for survival, this feeling
that we'reclinging to the rails; this is why I love my
city.

Coming from outer space

There is only one single factual piece of evidence about the descent
from planet Mars: there is a mount named Von Kármán
Crater on the Red Planet. Hungarians left more traces on the
Moon: a huge ring in the southern part of the far side of the
Moon has also been named Von Kármán Crater, honoring
the pioneer of supersonic flight. East of it is the tiny crater
honoring Imre Izsák, the Hungarian-American expert
of celestial mechanics of the Space Age (1929-1965). In the North-West,
near the lunar Terminator Line, halfway between H.G.Wells
and F. Joliot is the great Szilard Crater of 122 km in
diameter. East of it astronauts may find the Von Neumann Crater.
Further l9th century Hungarians, who did not cross the Ocean,
also deserved place on the Lunar Map: in the southern part of
the far side are János Bolyai (pioneer of non-Euclidean
geometry, 1802-1880); a bit east of it is Roland Eötvös.
A tiny crater represents Gyula Fényi, the Jesuit
solar astronomer (1845-1927), another one the Austro-Hungarian
Nobel laureate, Richard Zsigmondy. But there is a Martian
who proved that the craters on the Moon are not products of lunar
volcanism but had been created by impacts of meteors from outside:
Egon Orowan, while working on plasticity and fractures
in solids, studied high resolution photographs brought back by
the Apollo missions.7 (There is indeed an asteroid
named Teller orbiting around the Sun, discovered by E.F.
Helin in 1989.)

Speaking an alien tongue

An obvious explanation of the myth of the Martians may be their
strange language: its grammar and vocabulary are quite distinct
from those of the Indo-European languages. Kármán
and Bárány proudly accented the á
in their names at all times, in spite of the opposition of
computerized word processors. (The Báránys did so
through generations.) When polyglott Valentine Telegdi decided
to learn Japanese, he rushed to Budapest to buy a Japanese language
book written in Hungarian, because Hungarian grammar is similar
to Japanese, while for an English author it is difficult to explain
how Japanese think and speak. (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans put
family name first, given name as last; in Europe
only the Hungarian language follows this rule.)

According to myth, at a top secret meeting of the Manhattan Project
General Groves left for the gents' room. Szilard then said: -
Perhaps we may now continue in Hungarian! - Hungarian
emigrees enjoyed speaking their mother tongue whenever a chance
offered itself. This has made them look suspicious. Los Alamos
was a place of top security. General Groves was annoyed that Neumann
and Wigner had frequent telephone conversations in
Hungarian. [Teller, talk in
Budapest 1991.] The "thick Hungarian accent" was often
heard even in the corridors of the Pentagon. (The Lugosi accent
made the alien power of Dracula, the count from the faraway Transylvania
even more realistic. )

This explanation of the myth, however, is certainly not sufficient.
Let us quote now George Békésy:

- If a person traveling outside Hungary is recognized as a
Hungarian due to his accent, something which - beyond a certain
age - is impossible to drop, the question is asked almost in every
case: "How is it possible that a country as small
as Hungary has given the world so many internationally renown
scientists?" There are Hungarians who have tried to give
an answer. For my part: I cannot find an answer, but I would mention
one thing. When I lived in Switzerland, everything was peaceful,
quiet and secure; we had no problems earning a living. In Hungary,
life was different, and we all were involved in an ongoing struggle
for almost everything which we wanted, although this struggle
never caused anybody's perdition. Sometimes we won; sometimes
we lost; but we always survived. It did not bring an end to things,
not in my caseanyway. People need such challenges, and
these have existed throughout the history of Hungary.

Crossroads in space-time

It is a fact of history that the great figures of human culture
are not distributed evenly in space and time. They concentrated,
for example, in democratic Athens (Aristotle and Sophocles), while
the city was fighting against Persian invasions; in renaissance
Florence (Michelangelo and Galileo), in a city struggling with
the supremacy of the Pope; at the dawn of the English industrial
revolution (Shakespeare and Newton), while fighting the Spanish
Armada. Quiet periods require only social adjustment. Under a
changing climate, however, old schemes no longer work, such conditions
encourage creative individuals. If a very different final truth
is offered each month, young people learn critical thinking,
and become more interested in facts than in axioms. During the
recent political turmoil a joke circulated: - What is the most
unpredictable thing today in Hungary? The past! - Psychology
teaches us that an impact-rich environment cultivates talent.
To support this view, let's quote one of the strangest Martians,
Arthur Koestler8:

- When Tom Corbett, Space Cadett, behaves on the Third Planet
of Orion exactly in the same way as he does in a drugstore in
Minnesota, one is tempted to ask him: "Was your journey really
necessary?"

There may be historical reasons for this alien coherence
of the Hungarians: - Hungary was usually in turmoil; a situation
attributable mainly to an accident of geography.9-
As Kati Marton (Mrs Holbrook), who left Hungary as a child in
1957, said,l0 - My parents had too much history.
- My thesis is that Hungary (together with her Central-European
neighbors) has been at the crossroads of history, where the routes
from Rome (Catholicism), Germany (Reformation), Russia (Eastern
Orthodox Christianity), Osman Empire (Islam) met each other, presenting
alternatives and igniting conflicts. Armies from East and West
were marching on the roads through centuries. We have learned
agriculture from the Slavs, the Renaissance arrived from Italy,
and industry came from Germany. Through one and a half centuries
the armies of the Osman Empire took everything what they could
from the Hungarian peasants - but pigs; this is why pork is the
favorite meat of the Hungarians till today. Grapes were introduced
by the veterans of the Roman legions, in oder to make wine. Beer-brewing
came from Germany. The Russians have shown how to distill vodka.
And the Turks introduced the strong black coffee, a present national
drink of the Hungarians. So much about the first Hungarian millenium.

A hundred years ago (when the Martian heroes of this book were
born), a German-speaking Emperor-King ruled Hungary, supported
by feudal landlords. But the industrial revolution was already
in full swing, having brought the parliamentary system, compulsory
education (1868) - and unsolved social contradictions. In 1896
politicians in Parliament spoke of the glory of the past thousand
years of Hungarian history, but the world exposition, organized
in Budapest to honor the millenium, presented new physical inventions
and the first underground metro system on the continent was already
operational in Budapest (second only to London).

As the 20th century arrived, the Austro-Hungarian Empire started
playing the superpower: Turkey was expelled from most of the Balkan
Peninsula. Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia (1908), pushing Serbia
toward an alliance with Russia. After a Serbian nationalist murdered
the Habsburg crown-prince in Sarajevo (1914), war was declared
against Serbia. Russia rushed to help the Serbs, Germany responded
by attacking Russia, France and England declared war against Germany.
Thus World War I was started, and was lost. After the military
collapse Michael Károlyi, the liberal Count rose against
the Austrian emperor and created a pro-Western democratic Hungarian
Republic (31 October 1918). But with the encouragement of
the Western Powers the neighboring countries attacked Hungary.
Károlyi resigned, and a communist government organized
resistance - looking for help from Moscow (21 March 1919). Their
defense efforts could not last for long: Budapest was invaded
by foreign troops (July 1919). Finally a group of Hungarian army
officers assembled and took power (November 1919), made the country
formally a kingdom again (but the military rulers expelled the
Habsburg king trying to return). The rightist military rule took
revenge. A wave of emigration began.

Almost all the Martians attended university and began their careers
in Germany, where and when quantum mechanics had been born. This
does not contradict but confirms our thesis that conflicts
cultivate creativity. The 1920s were the decade of the Weimar
Republic, which was full of psychological conflicts: the democracy
was overshadowed by the lost World War ("Dolchstoss von hinten"
), the dream of a new German Empire (das Dritte Reich), the trilemma
of liberalism-communism-nazism. This fruitful period of the coexistence
of contradicting ideologies lasted there over ten years, before
terminating in the tragedies of the economic crisis, dictatorship,
and war.

A similar critical but creative period of accelerating history
was experienced in Petrograd in the early 1920s, after the
fall of the Czar and before the rise of Stalin, resulting in an
explosion of creativity. In Hungary, however, all these revolutions
and counter-revolutions happened in a mere twelve months!

The most sensitive period in human life is being a teenager,
when one's personal system of values is built up. The diagram
indicates that the Martians - so successful in later years across
the Ocean - attended high schools in Hungary just at the time
of the great World Wars (figure). What a privilegized time
to live in!

When were the Martians teenagers?

*

The Jews were expelled from Western Europe 500 years ago, but
were welcome in Eastern Europe for bringing trade and industry,
especially by the king of Poland. In the l9th century Poland was
divided among Germany, Austria, and Russia. Escaping from the
pogroms encouraged by Russian orthodox priests, the Jews moved
southwards, towards Hungary, adding to her former Jewish population.
According to ancient law, Jews were forbidden to own land, so
they turned toward trade and industry. Their wealth was increased
by the industrial revolution. At the proposal of the Minister
of Culture, the enlightened Baron József Eötvös
(the father of the physicist Roland Eötvös) the Hungarian
Parliament emancipated the Jews (1867). Some of them were made
noblemen for their services in the economy (e.g. the father of
George Hevesy in 1895, the father of Theodore Kármán
in 1907, the father of John Neumann in 1913). One hundred
years ago (1895) Baron Roland Eötvös, a physicist served
as Minister of Culture just for a few months. Because he was an
aristocrat, he was able to convince the conservative Parliament
to widen civil rights, including complete religious freedom and
civilian marriage. Around 1900, in the tolerant social climate
of Hungary over 50% of all the lawyers and medical doctors had
Jewish roots. In the eyes of conservative nationalists, however,
the Jews remained menacingly aliens. When the opportunity arose
during the right-wing restoration (1920), the first anti-Jewish
law, the numerus clausus was enacted in Hungary; according
to it, the percentage of Jewish university students was restricted
to the percentage of the Jewish population in the country as a
whole (1920). Thus history was even more compressed in time for
the Jews. The place of origin for the wandering Jew, the
fictional Leopold Bloom (alias Virág Lipót)
was placed in Hungary by James Joyce, describing the contemplative
day of 16 June 1904 on the streets of Dublin in the novel appropriately
entitled Ulysses.

Theodore Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of the movement
for an independent Jewish state was born and attended school in
Budapest. After graduation he left Hungary to study law in Vienna
(1878), and he died in Austria. (Now a grand boulvard in Tel-Aviv
is named Herzl Street, a hill in Jerusalem is Mount Herzl.) -
The word "Holocaust" (burning completely to dust) was
first used by peace-Nobel-laureate Elie Wiesel.

On this spot of the globe, within distances less than 1000 km,
we find Albanians, Austrians, Bosnians, Croatians, Czechs, Gypsies,
Hungarians, Jews, Slovakians, Slovenians, each possessing their
own language, their own culture, most of them their own country
with a population of a few million or even less. (This may remind
us of the city-states of Greece in Antiquity or the city-states
of Italy in the Renaissance, but here the linguistic-cultural
heritages differ even more.) The tolerated coexistence and sparking
conflict of cultures were present not only in foreign affairs
or in the sectors of the Parliament but within the heads of young
individuals. For example, it could happen in the family that the
father spoke Hungarian, the mother spoke German, grandma's family
originated somewhere in Poland, grandpa kept the Jewish feasts,
the school teacher taught Christianity. Around 1900 for Jews especially,
no career was open in politics, or in the army, they had to choose
business. If a successful businessman wished to provide higher
education for his son, he had to send him to study science or
engineering. When later the political climate turned stormy for
them, with the wind blowing from the east these young scientists
sailed westwards. They landed on the coast of the New World at
a time of great challenges and opportunities. Their rich political
experiences, their open minds, and their critical thinking were
their strengths. Nicholas Kurti told the author [Budapest
1990]:

- I don't think we were much more talented than the other students
in the West, but we knew that we could not go back. Our
talents would have to beused. There was no chance for
us to waste our talents. - John von Neumann confirmed: -
In this part of Central Europe there was an external pressure
on society, a feeling of extreme insecurity for individuals, and
the necessity to produce the unusual or else face extinction.4- Not everyone appreciated this originality. Telegdi recalled
Enrico Fermi saying: - All the Hungarians I met were intelligent
or terribly intelligent. Mostly too intelligent. Well, there are
times when it pays to beconventional. Arthur Koestler
expressed the opinion [Ubiquitous
Presence]:

- In contrast to Austria and other small countries, Hungary
did not have linguistic contact with her neighbors; Hungarians
form an isolated ethnic enclave in Europe. Hungarian writers could
find a wider readership only by emigrating, by writing in a foreign
tongue. But giving up the mother tongue usually means the end
of the career for a poet, or turns him into an insignificant journalist.
Since World War I the main export of Hungary has consisted of
best-selling journalists, producers, movie stars - the demi-monde
of international culture. They were scattered worldwide by a centrifugal
force, which arises when a small country has plenty of talents
without the chance for their unfolding at home. But later I recognized
that this opinion is only one side of the truth. This demi-monde
of the cafes and "gulash-bars" of Vienna, New York,
and Tokyo does not represent the most valuable part of the Hungarian
contribution to culture. The really valuable elements of the Hungarian
"export" were absorbed by the physics, mathematics,
and biology departments of universities, furthermore by hospitals,
research laboratories, state committees, and orchestra. I don't
think that a comparable exodus of scientists and artists ever
existed since the fall of Byzantium.

To Koestler's words let us add one remark. It may be that the
language of pictures was easier for immigrant Hungarians in America
that speaking and writing in the foreign tongue. (Vilma Banky
was an admired actor until sound film swept her off the screen
for her Hungarian accent. Tony Curtis was born in the U.S. but
he had to take long phonetics lessons to get rid of his inherited
Hungarian accent.) The French film review Positif recently
wrote:

- Hollywood gained much from the immigrant Hungarian artists'
creative capacities, dedication to imagery, their tendency of
daydreaming.11

Crossing borders

Tourist brochures advertise Hungary as the country of Tokaji wine,
red-hot paprika, gypsy music, csardas dancing. It is less ackowledged
that the coach (1400) and the match (1836), ball-point pen (1943)
and Rubik's cube (1978), alternating current technology (1885)
and streamlined airplanes (1928), tungsten filaments (1905) and
krypton-filled light bulbs (1930), radioactive tracing (1913)
and the nuclear reactor (1942), electronically programmable computers
(1946) and time-sharing computer networks (1960), the BASIC language
(1964) and the WORD word processor (1988), among others, emerged
from brains born and schooled in Hungary, and changed the way
we live in the 20th century. Wigner's student, Alvin Weinberg
designed the safe water-moderated nuclear reactors; Wigner's other
student, John Bardeen invented the transistor, opening new gates
for human progress.

The precondition for the coexistence of different cultures in
such a tiny domain of space-time is tolerance, a merit
of Hungarian society, especially in the early 20th century. Being
different enhances critical spirits and creative associations.
There is no better expert on this than Arthur Koestler who compared
his youth to riding a roller-coaster; in his late years he devoted
most of his attention to understanding the interplay between conflict
and creativity.l2 According to him the genius in science
or the arts notices that two concepts - considered beforehand
to belong to completely different dimensions - are deeply interrelated,
even identical. (There are several examples of such insights in
the history of science initiating scientific revolutions: Light
/ electricity. Heat / disorder. Mass / energy. DNA / heredity.
Struggle / evolution. ) If the student is instructed to memorize
only traditional skills, rules, laws, and boundaries postulated
by axioms, then he may not recognize further interrelations
presented by reality. But if someone is exposed to contradictions,
he will not be afraid of wild associations. As Koestler has put
it,

- The manner in which some of the most important individual
discoveries werearrived reminds one more of a sleepwalker's
performance than an electronic brain's.

*

- Chemistry and physics could only become united after physics
had renounced the dogma of the indivisibility and impermeability
of the atom, and chemistry had renounced its doctrine of ultimate
immutable elements. Anew evolutionary departure is only
possible after a certain amount of de-differentiation, a cracking
and thawing of the frozen structures resulting from isolated,
over-specialized development. Perhaps our age of specialists is
again in need of creative trespassers.l3

Well, Martians don't respect political and disciplinary boundaries;
this might be how these refugees from the Wild East of Europe
came to deserve the adjective: Mad Hungarians. It is impossible
to classify them according to well-established disciplines; they
show an inherent interdisciplinary spirit. It is hard to
tell whether George von Békésy, Andrew Grove,
George de Hevesy,John von Neumann, George Olah, Michael
Polanyi, Edward Teller, Valentine Telegdi, Eugene P. Wigner, Richard
A.Zsigmondy were chemical engineers (as their university
diplomas indicate) or biologists, mathematicians, physicists,
philosophers.

Geophysics was introduced by Roland Eötvös who,
after having studied the accurate proportionality of inertia and
gravity, applied his gravimeter to peep below the Earth's surface,
to find oil. George de Hevesy applied radioactivity to geochronology
as first. Egon Orowan used his pioneering results on plastic dislocations
in solids to explain the motion of glaciers, drifts of continents,
and the formation of mid-oceanic rifts.

Biophysics is a favorite hunting place for Martians: Robert
Bárány, Erwin Bauer, Albert Szent-Györgyi started
from medicine, George von Békésy, Leo Szilard, Eugene
P. Wigner from engineering, to cross the physics/biology borderline.
Wigner estimated the mathematical probability for the spontaneous
emergence of life in the framework of quantum mechanics. Szilard
experimented with evolution and speculated about the biochemistry
of aging. John von Neumann, the mathematician, distinguished the
role of software and hardware in the living cell before biologists
clarified the distinct roles of DNA and enzymes; he constructed
cellular automatons on the computer screen to explain self-reproducing
molecules, and wrote a book about the computer and the brain.
Martian mathematicians, physicists, and chemists cannot resist
biological temptations.

Information theory is an emerging new development on the
border of traditional disciplines. It originated with Leo Szilard's
paper on the conflict between information-creating intelligence
and disorder-creating thermodynamics (1929). John von Neumann
recognized first the revolutionary importance of electronically
programmable computers; after artillery trajectories he applied
them to meteorology, economics, and strategy. He was followed
by John Harsanyi, Nobel laureated for developing game theory in
economics for players with imperfect informations. Dennis Gabor
received the Nobel Prize for extracting the complete information
carried by a light ray with the technique of holography. John
G. Kemeny recognized that computers were for every (educated)
person, therefore he invented the Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code (BASIC). Charles Simonyi is now the chief architect
of Microsoft, the most successful software company. Andy Grove
is the president and chief executive officer at Intel, the most
successful hardware company. Hungary prepared the on-board computers
for the Russian long-distance space missions, which reached Mars
and Comet Halley. The RECOGNITA - software made in Hungary - is
able to read hand-written texts.

Telling the future

- We live in an age in which the pace of technological change
is pulsating ever faster, causing waves that spread outward
everywhere. This increased rate of change will have an impact
on you, no matter what you do for a living - it will bring new
competition from new ways of doing things, from corners that you
don't expect.It doesn't matter where you live. Long distances
used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated peop1e from
workers on the other side of the globe. But every day, technology
narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on
the verge of becoming both coworker and competitor to every one
of us.We can't stop changes. We can't hide from them.
Instead, we must focus on getting ready for them. - This was
written by Andrew Grove in his book Only the Paranoid Survive.l4

In a stable world sensing the state of the environment,
the so-called "social adjustment" has survival value.
In a variable climate, however, noticing the trends of
change (the time derivative), sensing coming storms helps
one survive. This explains another Martian characteristic: the
capability to predict the future.

- Leo Szilard proved to be the best prognosticator: he was
able to foresee events better than anybody else I know
- Ben Liebowitz said. When World War I erupted, Leo Szilard,
then 16, told his classmates: - I am not afraid to be called
to the army; Austria, Germany, and Russia will collapse. -
This prediction sounded strange because Russia was on the side
opposite to that of Austria-Hungary and Germany, but Szilard turned
out to be right! After World War I, in the 1920s he tried to organize
a Bund in Berlin, which "might stand ready to exercise
the functions of government if and when the parliamentary system
in Germany collapses, one or two generations hence. "15
Hitler took power in 1933. Szilard left Berlin one day before
Hitler ordered that Jews must not leave Germany. He did not
stay in Austria either because in 1936 he anticipated, - Nazi
Germany will invade Austria in two years. - So it happened
in 1938. In London he told Michael Polanyi: - I shall go to
America one year before war breaks out in Europe. - He sailed
in 1938, World War II started in 1939. After the war (1945), there
was a disagreement concerning the Russian capability to construct
an atomic bomb. Vannevar Bush, director at the U.S. Office of
Scientific Research and Development guessed a decade; Szilard
predicted five years. The first Soviet atomic bomb actually exploded
in September 1949. Szilard wrote in his letter to Stalin (1947):
- It will only be a question of time, a few short years perhaps,
until peace will be at the mercy of some Yugoslav general
in the Balkans or some American admiral in the Mediterranean who
may willfully or through bungling create an incident that will
inevitably result in a new war.16-- In
Yugoslavia we witness today the Catholic [Croatian]-Eastern Orthodox
[Serbian]-Islam [Bosnian] conflict, and the superpower play behind
it, having turned again to war. As Leo Szilard has summarized:
- You don't have to be cleverer, you justhave to be
one day earlier.

- My father taught me that one gains very little knowledge
of how to behave as a nation from looking at year-to-year changes.
To find the true worth of historical experience, one must examine
generations - Von Kármán recalled. It is Central
Europe where history happens. World War I erupted in Sarajevo
(Bosnia). World War II started in Danzig (Gdansk, Poland). The
focus of the present greatest European conflict was again Sarajevo.
Condensed historical experiences enable the scientists living
here to notice the trends more acutely than those living in quieter
regions. Dennis Gabor had already written in 1938: What a Price
of Peace!

- President Wilson's 1919 doctrine about national self-determination
was so self-evidently right that people did not see what nonsense
it was. - The problem is that people in Bosnia, Chechnya,
Kurdistan, and elsewhere still believe in it.

John von Neumann also wrote in June 1938: - I think , that
there will be war, although it may be at a distance of a half
year or perhaps even one or two years. - (The exact time of
grace left was 15 months.) About the Western surrender in the
case of Czechoslovakia in Munich (30 September 1938) he said:
- I can only say that Mr. Chamberlain obviously wanted to do
me a great personal favor. I needed a postponement of the next
world war very badly - because Neumann traveled to Budapest
to marry in November. In 1940 the German army cut through France
as Neumann predicted, but he also expressed the unbelievable
views that Britain would deter a German invasion, and whichever
president was going to be elected in 1940, would probably bring
America into the war in 1941. (So it happened.) He thought
that free mankind's two enemies (Hitler and Stalin, that time
allies) might by then be doing the nice thing of fighting each
other. - Stanislav Ulam, a fellow mathematician at the Manhattan
Project, said: - I can testify that in his forecasts of political
events leading to World War II and of military events during the
war, most of von Neumann's gueesseswere amazingly correct.l7

Egon Orowan - a physicist turned mechanical engineer - picked
up writings of Ibn-Khaldun, the l4th century Tunisian Arab historian,
about the rise, maturation, and senescence of Arabic tribes from
dynamic beginnings to rich and decadent ends, when they are replaced
by a new wave of dynamic invaders. Orowan has found many parallels
to these in modern Western societies where economics becomes to
be of central importance. Beginning at Adam Smith and Malthus,
Orowan concluded that the present problems of industralized Western
societies result from ever increasing productivity which replaces
the old crafts of many skilled craftsmen with automated industries.
The outcome is chronic unemployment followed by government's "charity"
in the form of armanent industry, in government contracts for
public work and research centers not necessarily needed by society.
Orowan liked to call his approach to socionomy, coined
from sociology+economy.

- Till now man has been up against Nature, from now on he will
be up against his own nature - said Dennis Gabor.l8 -
Our civilization faces three great dangers. The first is destruction
by nuclear war, the second is overpopulation, and the third is
the Age of Leisure. For the first time in history we are now faced
with the possibility of a world in which only a minority needs
work to keep the great majority in idle luxury. Soon the minority
which has to work for the rest may be so small that it could be
entirely recruited from the most gifted part of the population.
Almost every important invention unbalances the front of progress,
and a new invention is needed to redress the balance. Disinfectants
have reduced child mortality, and we need the "pill"
to keepthe population in bounds. The steam engine, the
internal combustion engine are threatening our stock of fossile
fuel with exhaustion; we must have nuclear power and later on
thermonuclear power. We cannot stop inventing, because we are
riding a tiger.

*

- It's like sailing a boat when the wind shifts on you but
for some reason, maybe because you are down below, you don't even
sensethat the wind has changed until the boat suddenly
keelsover. What worked before doesn't work anymore; you
need to steer the boat in a different direction quickly before
you are in trouble, yet you have to get a feel of the new direction
and the strength of the wind before you can hope to right the
boat and set a new course. And the tough part is that it is exactly
at times like this that hard and definite actions are required.
So the ability to recognize that the winds have shifted and to
takeappropriate action before you wreck your boat is crucial
to the future of an enterprise. - This is what Andrew Grove,
a skilled navigator says about his experiences, failures, and
successes.14

Perhaps the storms experienced by Martian sailors beforehand in
Europe enabled Szilard to sense the approach of the Atomic Era
and Neumann to feel the coming of the Computer Era. What do common
terrestrials do when the storm arrives?

- When the environment changes in such a way as to render the
old skills and strengths less relevant, we almost instinctively
cling to our past. We refuse to acknowledge changes around us,
almost like a child who doesn't like what he's seeing so he closes
his eyesand counts to 100 and figures that what bothered
him will go away. The phrase you're likely to hear from grownups
at such times is "Just give us a bit more time."14

*

Correct forecasting of the future may make money. - Countervailing
forces usually prevail, but occasionally they fail. That is when
we have a change of regime or revolution. I am particularly interested
in this occasion. I can do better in the financial markets than
dealing with history in general, becausefinancial markets
provide a more clearly defined space and the data are quantified
and publicly available - George Soros said.l9-
My basic idea is that our understanding of the world in which
we live is inherently imperfect. There is always a discrepancy
between the participant's views and expectations and the actual
state of affairs. Sometimes the discrepancy is so small that it
can bedisregarded but, at other times, the gap
is so large that it becomesan important factor in determining
the course of events. History is made by the participants' errors,
biases, and misconceptions. - Citizens of quiet regions
may afford to believe in a fixed set of values, but Hungarians
cannot afford it. This is how Soros explains his successful intuitions:

- Rationality has its uses, but it also has its limitations.
If we insist on staying within the limits of reason, we cannot
copewith the world in which we live. By contrast, a belief
in our fallibility can take us much farther. It can guide us through
life.

Andrew Grove gives the following diagnosis on the state of the
world: - When most companies of a previously regulated economy
are suddenly thrust into a compatitive environment, the changes
multiply. Management now has to excelin the midst of a
global cacophony of competing products, and every person on the
labor force suddenly must compete for his or her job with employees
of similar companies on the other side of the globe. When such
fundamental changes hit a whole economy simultaneously, their
impact is cataclysmic. They affect an entire country's political
system, its social norms and its way of life. This is what we
see in the former Soviet Union and, in a more controlled fashion,
in China. l4

George Soros warnsl9 that the West is now missing a
special opportunity to lead the former communist world from the
closed societies of the past into the open community of nations:
- We do not have much time to come to our senses. The collapse
of the Soviet Empire meant the end of a stable world order that
prevailed during the Cold War, only we did not realize it. We
carry on with business as usual while all our institutions of
collective security are disappearing. The collapse of communism
was a revolutionary event, and a revolution creates opportunities!
- Later he added [Time, 10 July 1995]: - We have
missed the opportunity, and now it will be forty years in the
wilderness.

Saving the world

A trait related to this peculiar property of the Martians was
that they even tried to save the world. Some of them were
considered to be hawks, others were doves, but each of them felt
convinced that he was right.20 - We were - and still
are - trying to shape the future at a time whenthis
idea doesn't have broad currency. We were - and are - to be early
movers - as Andrew Grove wrote.l4 It may be due
to the rich historical heritage of the Martians that they all
liked to offer advice, even to Presidents. Leo Szilard urged
President Roosevelt to develop nuclear power. President Kennedy
answered his letters about the importance of a superpower dialoge,
resulting in the Washington-Moscow hot line. Szilard also contacted
Khrushchev, Nehru, and the Pope. Theodore von Kármán
advised President Kennedy on supersonic flight and ballistic
missiles; he met Stalin and Gandhi as well. Eugene P. Wigner
pressed President Johnson on civil defense. John von Neumann
advised President Eisenhower on nuclear and rocket armaments.
His daughter, Marina von Neumann advised President Nixon
on economic affairs. Albert Szent-Györgyi travelled
to Moscow to inform Stalin about the misbehavior of the Red Army
in Hungary; invited President Kennedy to his home; criticized
President Johnson bitterly for his war in Vietnam; even wrote
a Presidential Speech - never told. John G.Kemeny advised
President Carter on the safety of nuclear plants at the time of
the Three Mile Island accident. Edward Teller advised President
Reagan on Star Wars; he is in contact with the prime ministers
of Israel and Hungary concerning national modernization programs.
Elie Wiesel received the Medal of the Congress and President
Reagan made him chairman of The President's Commission of the
Holocaust. George Soros asked President Clinton to devote
more attention to Central-Eastern Europe. As journalists claim,
Soros used to have breakfast with one head of state, and dinner
with another one on the very same day. - I am not ashamed of
my messianic fantasies; the world would be a grim place without
such fantasies.l9

In the middle of the night Arthur Koestler called and woke
up Gaitskell, the leader of the British Labour Party, before Gaitskell's
visit to Moscow, asking for his intervention at Krushchev in order
to save the life of the Hungarian writer Tibor Déry after
1956 - and he succeeded. In the 1930s, during his visits to the
Soviet Union, Michael Polanyi contacted Bukharin, chief
of scientific and technological planning. In conclusion, let us
quote Dennis Gabor, one of the most ardent prophets, who
took a long view ahead in his evangelium entitled Inventing
the Future.

- Technological development is much too fast to be matched
by biological adaptation of man. Mosesshowed the Promised
Land to his people, but then he led them around for forty years
in the wilderness until a new generation worthy of it had grown
up. Now forty years is not an unreasonable estimate for educating
a new generation which can live in leisure, but we must find a
better equivalent of the wilderness. At the present stage of technology
the time ought to be shorter - merely the time to train teachers
and for the teachers to train the first generation of modern workers.
It is not so much the education of the people which is slow but
the education of the leaders.

The prophecies of Hungarians were not always appreciated by their
fellow scientists. Still, eventually, some of their forecasts
and advice were acknowledged in America - because they worked.
This has made the liberation of nuclear power also a Martian success
story. The first six recipients of the Atoms for Peace Award
were Niels Bohr (1957) for the theory of the atom and
its nucleus, George de Hevesy (1958) for radioactive tracing
and its application in medicine, Leo Szilard and Eugene
Wigner (1959), as well as Alvin Martin Weinberg and
Walter Henry Zinn (1960), "to honor the four men,
who, of all men living, have done most to originate and perfect
the nuclear fission chain reactor. It alone, of all devices thus
far conceived, provides practical means for utilizing the energy
of the atomic nucleus and producing radio-isotopes in abundance.
These gifts of the atom, if used wisely, will be of inestimable
benefit to mankind. " - (A Dane, a Canadian, an
American and three Hungarians make up this list.)